clumsy spiders in our future?

One major downside of global warming? Spiders. So many spiders. Previous studies have suggested that warmer weather may mean more spiders overall (and bigger ones, at that) and may make poisonous species more common.

But apparently we have to worry about them getting fast and clumsy, too. In a study published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, researchers tested how temperature changes a spider's ability to move. It's a good question: Spiders rely on fluid to move their limbs. At 59 degrees Fahrenheit, the spiders moved no faster than 20 cm a second. At the top temperature of 104 degrees, they nearly tripled that speed.

But the spiders weren't taking bigger steps — just more of them. They went all the way from four steps a second to as many as 10. And that made them clumsier. Their joints weren't as coordinated as they were at lower temperatures. This is probably because the fluid that controls their limb movement can't keep up with the high speeds that come with high temperatures.

Juvenile Turtles Are No Slackers

Sea turtles 6 to 18 months old are active swimmers that work hard to find favorable ocean habitats, according to a new study in Current Biology. Scientists know little about the so-called lost years that young turtles spend at sea before returning to coastal areas to forage and reproduce. Juvenile sea turtles were thought to passively drift with ocean currents. Researchers discovered otherwise after using satellite telemetry to track 44 young turtles in the Gulf of Mexico.

$200 million for new supercomputer

The U.S. Department of Energy announced that it will give Argonne National Laboratory $200 million to make the Chicago-area home to a high-performance supercomputer that is five to seven times faster than current top supercomputers. Aurora will be available for scientific use in 2019.

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